A Different Economic Perspective

Libertarian Folding@Home

Recently I’ve come back to the Folding@Home project after a long absence. It’s a fascinating project, but participation costs electricity and uses up one entire core on a processor. I’ve returned because I’m presently using a four-core CPU; whereas before on a two-core CPU I often had performance issues due to extensive multitasking, on this four-core CPU running Folding@Home costs me no performance. The electrical cost is not very noticable.

Folding@Home is a project to study the way that proteins in the body assemble themselves by simulating the process in depth. The processor-intensive work of simulation is spread across a great many different computers. It’s an alternative to renting time with a supercomputer. Illnesses that they are studying include Alzheimer’s Disease, cancer, cystic fibrosis, and Parkinson’s Disease, to name just a few.

The reason I would use this blog-space to highlight the Folding@Home project is because there’s a Libertarian Volunteers group in it. The Libertarian Volunteers group for Folding@Home is presently ranked 1150 out of 172436 groups, and between its 31 different participants has completed 4468 work units, 22 of them contributed by myself. Further help to the Libertarian Volunteers would be great and would raise the team ranking. This both helps a good cause and in a small way increases the prominence of the party. For anyone who wishes to join, the team number is 11402.